Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Marcus had not known such fear since his one-time master had tricked him through the station’s Roman gate and sold him back into a slavery from which Skeeter Jackson had rescued him. Abandoning the Down Time’s bar without a backward glance, he bolted into the chaos loose on Commons, hard on the heels of Robert Li, the antiquarian who’d burst into the bar with the white-faced news: “Marcus! Someone’s shot at Skeeter and Ianira!”
Ianira! Fear for her robbed breath he needed for running. Everything that was good and beautiful in his life had come through her, through the miracle of a highly born woman who had been treated cruelly by her first husband, who had still managed, somehow, to love Marcus enough to want his touch, to want the love he had offered as very nearly the only thing in his power to give her. He had been a slave and although Marcus was free now in a way he had never dreamed possible, he would never be a wealthy man, could never give Ianira the kind of life she deserved.
If anything had happened to her, anything… He could not conceive of a life without her. And their children, how could he tell their beautiful little girls they would never see their mother again? Please, he prayed to the gods of his Gallic childhood, to the Roman gods of his one-time masters, but especially to the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus, the Great Mother of all living creatures, whose temple Ianira had served as a child in that ancient goddess’ holy city, please let her be unharmed and safe…
Marcus was struggling to thrust himself through a packed crowd at the edge of Urbs Romae when a hand closed around his arm. A voice he didn’t recognize said, “As you value your children’s lives, come with me.”
Shocked, he turned—and found himself staring into haunted grey eyes.
He could not have said if the person watching him so narrowly was male or female. But there was pain in those grey eyes, desperate pain and fear and something else, something dark and deadly that made his pulse shudder.
“Who—?”
“Your wife is safe. For the moment. But I can’t keep her safe forever, not from the people who want her dead. And your children are in terrible danger. Please. I can’t tell you why, not here. But I swear to you, if you’ll just come with me and bring your little girls, I’ll do everything in my power to keep all of you alive.”
It was insane, this impulse to trust. Too many people had betrayed Marcus over the years, and too much that was precious to him, more precious than his own life, depended on his making the right choice. This is Shangri-La Station, he found himself thinking desperately, not Rome. If I am betrayed here, there are people who will move heaven and stars to come to our aid…
In the end, it came down to one simple fact: this person knew where Ianira was. If Marcus wanted to see her, he had to go. And the girls?
“I will not risk my children until I know Ianira is safe.”
Impatience flared in those grey eyes. “There’s no time for this! My God, we’ve already killed one of them, before he could shoot her. They’ll murder your little girls, Marcus, in cold blood. I’ve seen how they kill! Cassie Tyrol died right in front of me and there was nothing I could do to save her—”
Marcus started. “The woman from the movies? Who played the priestess of Artemis, the Temple harlot? She is dead?”
Pain shone in those grey eyes. “Yes. And the same people who killed her are trying to kill Ianira, her whole family. Please, I’m begging you… get your little girls out of danger while there’s still time. I’ll tell you everything, I swear it. But we have to move now.”
Marcus pressed clenched fists to his temples, tried to think clearly, wishing he possessed even a hundredth the skill Ianira did in reading people’s hearts and intentions. Standing irresolute in the middle of a panic-stricken crowd jammed into Commons, voices echoing off the girders of the ceiling five stories overhead, Marcus had never felt more alone and afraid in his life. Not even as a child, thrust into chains and caged like an animal for sale. Then, the only person at risk had been himself. Now…
“They are at the school and daycare center,” he decided, voice brusque. “This way.”
He still didn’t know if the grey-eyed person at his side was a man or a woman.
But when they reached the daycare center and interrupted an ugly, heart-stopping tableau, Marcus discovered that his shaky trust in his new companion was well-founded. They skidded through the daycare center’s doors at an all-out run—and found an armed Arabian Nights construction worker holding Harriet Banks at gunpoint. Another armed man was dragging Artemisia and Gelasia away from the other children. Rage and terror scalded Marcus, blinded him, sent him forward with fists clenched, even as the grey-eyed person with him erupted with a violence that would have struck terror, had that violence been aimed at his family.
Marcus barely had time to see the gun before it discharged. The roar deafened in the confines of little daycare center. His ears rang even as smoke bellied out from the antique gun’s barrel. Children screamed and scattered like frightened ants. The construction worker closest to them, the one holding a gun on Harriet Banks, jerked just once, then fell like a man whose legs have been abruptly jerked out from beneath him. The hole through the back of his skull was far smaller than the one through his face, where the bullet had plowed through on its way out. Shock caught Marcus like a fist against the side of his head—then the black-powder pistol discharged again and the man holding Artemisia’s wrist plowed into the floor, obscenely dead.
Marcus snapped out of shock with the grotesque thud as the second body landed on the daycare center’s floor. He flung himself toward his screaming children. “Hush… it’s all right, Daddy’s here…”
He gathered the girls close, hugged them, wept against their hair.
“Marcus! Come on, man! More of the bastards are headed this way!”
Marcus had no time to say anything to Harriet Banks, who was trying to get the other children out through the back door, away from the carnage in the playroom. He simply scooped up his daughters and ran with them, following his unknown benefactor into the chaos on Commons. There were, indeed, more construction workers racing toward them, with weapons clutched in their hands as tourists screamed and scattered.
His benefactor’s voice cut through shock and terror. “Do you know any better way to reach the Neo Edo Hotel? They’re between us and any safety we’ve got on this station.”
Marcus took one look at the burly construction workers running toward them and swore savagely in the language only he, alone of all residents on TT-86, could understand. His Gaulish tribe was as extinct as the language they’d spoken. But his children were still alive. He intended to keep them that way. “This way,” he snarled, spinning around and plunging toward Residential. “Down-timers know all the secret ways through this station!”
Skeeter had taught Marcus routes he’d never suspected could be used to get from one side of the station to the other. Those escape routes had proven useful when he and Ianira had needed to slip away from the pressing attentions of her adoring acolytes, trying to gain a little privacy for themselves. Marcus had never dreamed he would need them to save his little family from cold-blooded murder. Why anyone would want to kill them, he could not imagine. But he intended to find out.
Marcus might be nothing more than an ex-slave, a down-timer without legal rights. But he was a husband and a father and an “ ’eighty-sixer,” a member of the insane, fiercely independent, intensely loyal community of residents who called Time Terminal Eighty-Six home. Whoever sought to kill them, they had failed to take that particular fact into account. ’Eighty-sixers took care of their own.
Even if it meant breaking up-time laws to do so.
By the time Skeeter arrived at the aerie, Bull Morgan’s glass-walled office was packed, standing room only. And that was without the howling mob of reporters trying to get past security to the elevator and stairs that led up to the station manager’s ceiling-level office. The elevator had been crowded, too, with ’eighty-sixers responding to the emergency call for search teams. Connie Logan, owl-eyed behind her thick glasses and dressed as outlandishly as ever in bits and pieces of various costumes she’d been testing when the call had gone out, stood crammed into one corner, trying not to jab anybody with the pins sticking out of her clothes. Arley Eisenstein, restauranteur of one of the ten most famous restaurants on the planet and married to the station’s head of medicine, stared at the elevator doors with his jaw muscles clenched so tight, Skeeter wondered why his teeth hadn’t broken yet. Brian Hendrickson, station librarian and a man who hadn’t forgotten the circumstances of Skeeter’s disastrous wager with Goldie, any more than he’d forgotten anything else he’d ever seen, heard, or read, was swearing colorfully in a language Skeeter had never heard in his life. Ann Vinh Mulhaney had come upstairs from the weapons range in company with a woman Skeeter recognized as one of the Ripper Watch Team members. Both women were as silent as ghosts and very nearly as pale.
Dr. Shahdi Feroz, Skeeter knew, was not just a world-renowned Ripperologist, she was also the team’s cult-phenomena expert. She had made a life’s study of criminal cults and intended to research first-hand Victorian London’s teeming subculture of spiritualists, occult worshipers, Celtic-revivalists, magic practitioners, and the city’s numerous flourishing, quasi-religious cult groups. It had led her to support some rather unusual ideas about the Ripper murders. What she knew about down-time occult groups made for a terrifying parallel to what Skeeter knew of up-time cults. He’d seen his share of them in New York. And over the past few years, the new ones popping up like malignant mushrooms made those older ones look positively apple-pie ordinary. Which was doubtless why Bull Morgan had personally requested her presence at this meeting. Shahdi Feroz, as elegant and composed as a Persian queen, dark hair upswept in a mass of thick, raven’s-wing waves, glanced at Skeeter, evidently aware of his intent scrutiny, and started to speak—
And the elevator doors slid open onto pandemonium.
Shahdi Feroz turned aside at once, stepping out of the elevator to make room for the others. She glanced over at Ann through dark, worried eyes as they all crowded off the elevator and tried, somewhat vainly, to find space in Bull’s packed office.
“I didn’t expect quite so many people to be here.” Her speech was rich and fluid. Skeeter, fascinated by the rising and falling inflections of her exotic voice, managed to locate a space that hid him from most people’s view.
Ann answered in a strained undertone. “I did. In fact, I’m betting we won’t be the last to arrive.”
When the weapons instructor glanced around, her gaze paused on Skeeter. The look in Ann’s eyes caused him to stiffen. Skeeter clenched his jaw and looked away first, unsure which was worse: the pity or the deep, lingering suspicion that Skeeter had only been using Ianira, the way most ’eighty-sixers thought he used everyone he came into contact with. There was nothing he could say, no explanation he could—or cared to—offer that anyone in this room would believe. With the down-timers on station, it was different. But in a room crammed shoulder-to-jowl with up-time ’eighty-sixers, Skeeter felt as alone and isolated as he’d felt in Yesukai’s felt tent, a lost little boy of eight without the ability to understand a word spoken around him or to go home again to a family that didn’t want him, anyway.
He set his jaw and wished to hell Bull would get this meeting underway. He needed to be down on Commons, searching. He’d only come to this meeting because he was not, by God, going to let them leave him out of whatever decisions were made on where and how to search for her. A door near the back of Bull’s office opened and Ronisha Azzan, the deputy station manager, appeared, looking worried. She said something to Bull, too low for Skeeter to overhear. Bull ground his teeth over the stubby end of an unlit cigar, then spat debris into an ornate brass spittoon strategically positioned on one corner of his desk. Margo arrived a moment later via the elevator, breathless, her green eyes clouded with fear. She spotted Ann Vinh Mulhaney and Shahdi Feroz and bit her lower lip, then pushed past to Bull’s desk. “I can’t find Marcus,” she said flatly. “He ran out of the Down Time with Robert Li and nobody’s seen him since. Robert said Marcus was behind him one minute and he’d vanished into the crowd the next.” Ronisha Azzan stepped into the office behind Bull’s, swearing under her breath.
Skeeter knew a moment of fear almost as deep as when Ianira had vanished right in front of him. Then reason reasserted itself, helped by the white-knuckled hands he used to push back heavy locks of hair sticking to his damp brow. Marcus would be with other Found Ones, searching, of course, there was no reason to panic, no up-timer on station knew the back routes the way the down-timers did, somebody had obviously got to him and maybe even told him they’d seen her somewhere…
Station alarms screamed to life again.
Fear tightened down once more, driving daggers through Skeeter’s nerves. He very nearly pulled out two fistfuls of his own hair. Skeeter clenched his jaw and made himself wait, while sweat prickled out over his entire torso. Bull Morgan snatched the security phone off his desk and shouted, “What the hell is it now?”
Whatever was said on the other end, Bull’s florid face actually lost color. The unlit cigar he chewed went deathly still. Then he spat out the cigar with a furious curse and snarled, “Turn this station upside down, dammit, but find them! And I want every construction worker in this goddamned station locked up on suspicion of attempted murder, do you hear me, Benson? Do it! Ronisha!” The phone didn’t quite bend when he slammed the receiver back down, but a crack appeared in the plastic casing.
The deputy station manager, African-patterned silks swirling around her tall figure, reappeared from the back office, talking urgently to someone via squawky. She was snarling, “I don’t care who you have to slap in the brig! Control that mess or find yourself another job! Yes?” she asked, turning her attention to Bull.
“Get down to the war room! Coordinate the search from down there. Have Benson’s security teams report directly to you there. We’ve got another helluva mess breaking loose.”
Ronisha fled down the back stairs, squawky in hand. La-La Land’s station manager faced the expectant hush from the crowd in his office. The silence in the glass-walled office was as unbearable as the sound of fingernails on a blackboard.
Bull said heavily, “There’s been a shooting at the daycare center. Two construction workers messily dead, dozens of children in hysterics. Marcus and his little girls vanished in the middle of the shooting.” Nausea bit Skeeter’s throat. He forced himself not to bolt for the elevator, forced himself to wait, to hear the rest of it. “A couple of Scheherazade construction workers were trying to take his daughters out at gunpoint when Marcus showed up with someone Harriet didn’t recognize. Whoever it was, they shot both construction workers dead and took Marcus and the girls out of there.” Bull craned to peer through the crowd of white-faced, furious residents. “Is Dr. Feroz here yet?”
Shahdi Feroz pushed through the throng to the front of Bull’s office. “Yes, Mr. Morgan, I am here. How may I help?”
“I want to know what we’re up against. Kit Carson told security the bastards who’ve attacked Ianira and her family are members of the Ansar Majlis Brotherhood. He’s not here yet, or I’d ask him to brief us.”
Shahdi Feroz moved sharply at the mention of the Brotherhood, as though wanting to deny what he’d just said. Then she sighed, tiredly. “Ansar Majlis… This is very bad, very dangerous. The Ansar Majlis Brotherhood began when Islamic fundamentalist soldiers began recruiting down-time Islamic warriors for jihad through the gates where TT-66 used to be. The station is destroyed, but the gates still function, of course.”
She spoke with a bitterness Skeeter understood only too well. He hadn’t known anyone personally on the station, but hundreds of innocents had died when the station had been blown sky-high. The elevator’s soft ping! sent Skeeter two inches straight up the wall. But it was only Kit Carson, face haggard, eyes bleak. He moved quietly into the office as Dr. Feroz continued her explanation.
“Since the station was destroyed, thousands of down-time recruits have been brought through to fight jihad. Some of these soldiers have banded together to form a brotherhood. They have styled themselves after the nineteeth-century Ansar, fanatical religious soldiers of the Mahdi, an Islamic messiah who drove the British out of the Sudan and killed General Gordon at Khartoum. It operates very much like the social structure of a nomadic tribe. Those in the brotherhood are fully human; those outside are not. And the lowest, least human of all are the women of the Lady of Heaven Temples. Such women are considered evil and heretical by these soldiers. A female priesthood, a female deity…” She shook her head. “They have sworn the destruction of the Artemis Temple and all Templars. There has been trouble with them in the Middle East, but they were for many years contained there. It seems they are contained no longer. If they have managed to establish cells in major cities like New York, there will be terrible violence against the Temple and its members. The whole purpose of this cult is to destroy the Lady of Heaven Temples as completely as if they had never existed. It is jihad, Mr. Morgan, a particularly virulent, fundamentalist form of hatred.”
Skeeter wanted to close his hands around someone’s throat, wanted to center the bastards responsible for these attacks on Ianira and her family in the sights of any weapon he could lay hands on. Instead, he forced himself to wait. He had learned patience from Yesukai, had learned that to destroy an enemy, one must first know and understand him.
Bull Morgan clenched his teeth over the stub of his cigar, which he’d retrieved from his desk top and was now shredding between molars once again. “All of which explains the attack on Ianira. And her kids, goddamn it. But those construction workers have been on station for weeks. Why wait until now to attack? Why today?”
Margo spoke up hesitantly. “Maybe someone came through Primary today with orders? I mean, the whole thing blew up within minutes of Primary cycling.”
Bull pinned her with a sharp stare. Kit nodded silently, clearly agreeing with that assessment. It made sense to Skeeter, as well. Too much sense. And there was that terrifying vision of Ianira’s, right before the violence had erupted. Right after Primary had cycled.
Bull picked up his security phone again. “Ronisha, I want a dossier on every man, woman, and child who came through Primary today. Complete history. Anybody who might have ties to the Middle East or the Ansar Majlis Brotherhood, I want questioned.”
Skeeter wanted to question two other individuals, too: the wild-eyed young kid who’d shot whoever it was behind Ianira and Skeeter in that riot, and the person who’d knocked both Ianira and Skeeter to the floor in time for that kid to do the shooting. Skeeter wondered which one of that pair had done the killing in the daycare center. Whoever they were, they clearly knew about the threat to Ianira and her family. But why were they trying to protect her? Were they Templars? Someone else? Skeeter intended to find out, if he had to take them apart joint by joint to learn the truth.
Only to do that, he had to find them first.
He edged toward the elevator, impatient to do something besides stand here and listen. Bull hung up the phone again and started spitting orders. “All right, I want the biggest manhunt in the history of this station and I want it yesterday. Hotels, restaurants, shops, residential, library, gym, weapons ranges, physical plant and maintenance areas, waste management, storage, everything. Organize search teams according to the station’s emergency management plan. Presume these bastards are armed and dangerous. Personal weapons are not only permitted, but encouraged. Questions?”
Nobody had any.
Least of all Skeeter.
“Let’s move it, then, people. I want Ianira and her family found.”
Skeeter got to the elevator before anybody else and found himself sharing a downward ride with Kit Carson, of all people. The retired time scout glanced at him as others crowded into the elevator. “You’ll organize the Found Ones?”
The question surprised Skeeter. He and Kit Carson were hardly on civil terms, not after his ill-conceived attempt to get Margo into bed with that ruse about being a time scout, himself. Of course, he hadn’t known Margo was Kit’s granddaughter at the time. In point of fact, not even Kit had known, then. But when the scout had discovered the truth, his visit to Skeeter had been anything but grandfatherly—and nothing even remotely resembling cordial. Kit’s concern now surprised Skeeter, until he realized that it had nothing to do with Skeeter and everything to do with how Kit felt about Ianira Cassondra.
So he nodded with a short jerk of his head. “They’ll be organized already, but I’ll join them.”
“Let me know if you need anything.”
Again, Skeeter stared. He said slowly, grudgingly, “Thanks. We’re pretty organized, but I’ll let you know if something comes up we can’t handle.” Not that he could think of anything. The Found Ones’ Council of Seven had made certain the resident down-timers on station were as prepared as possible for any station crisis that threatened them. The down-timers were, in fact, as prepared as Sue Fritchey’s Pest Control officers were for an invasion of anything from hordes of locusts to prehistoric flying reptiles—which, in point of fact, TT-86 had been forced to deal with, just a few months previously.
Kit’s next question startled the hell out of Skeeter.
“Would you mind if Margo and I joined you and the Found Ones to search?”
Skeeter’s brows dove down as suspicion flared. “Why?”
Kit held his gaze steadily. “Because if anyone on this station has a chance of finding them, it’s the down-timers. I’m aware of those meetings held in the subbasements. And I know how underground organizations operate. I also want rather badly to be there if and when we do find whoever is responsible for this.”
Skeeter had known for a long time that Kenneth “Kit” Carson was a thoroughly dangerous old man, the sort you didn’t want as an enemy, ever. It came as a slight shock, however, to realize that the retired time scout would relish taking apart whoever had done this as thoroughly as Skeeter, himself, would. He hadn’t expected to share anything in common with the world’s most famous recluse.
“All right,” he found himself saying tightly. “You’re on. But when we do find them…”
“Yes?”
He looked the man he was mortally afraid of straight in the eye. “They’re mine.”
Kit Carson’s sudden grin was as lethal as the look in his eyes. “Deal.”
Skeeter was left with the terrifying feeling that he’d just made a deal with a very formidable devil, indeed. A deal that was likely to lead him places he truly didn’t want to go. Before he could worry too intensely about it, however, the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors opened with a swoosh. Five minutes later, he was leading the way through Commons, an unlikely team leader for a search team consisting of himself, Kit Carson, the fiery tempered Margo, and—surprisingly—Dr. Shahdi Feroz.
“The Britannia opens in less than six hours,” Margo said pointedly when she insisted on joining them.
“Yes, it does. And I am as ready as I will ever be. I may not know how to shoot a gun yet, but I am certain you can remedy that for me once we reach London, Miss Smith.”
The look Margo shot the breathtakingly beautiful older woman wavered somewhere between pleased surprise and wary assessment. Skeeter wondered why, but he didn’t have the time to pursue it. Then he spotted Bergitta, a young down-timer who’d fallen through an unstable gate from medieval Sweden. She’d been crying, to judge from her reddened, swollen eyes. She’d hooked up with young Hashim ibn Fahd, a down-time teenager who’d fallen through the Arabian Nights gate, and with Kynan Rhys Gower, whose face was a lethal mask of fury.
Bergitta gave a glad cry when she spotted him. “Oh, Skeeter! We have looked and looked…”
Kit was already speaking rapidly in Welsh with the bowman, who had sworn an oath of fealty to Kit down that unstable gate into sixteenth-century Portuguese southern Africa. Skeeter gave Bergitta’s hands a swift and reassuring squeeze. “The search teams are organized and out?”
“Yes, Skeeter, and I am told to say to you, please search the escape routes from Little Agora to Frontier Town. You will need a team…”
“They’re with me,” Skeeter said roughly, nodding at the others. “Not my choice, but they’re good.”
It was a monumental understatement, one of his all-time best, in fact.
Bergitta, who knew their reputations perfectly well, for all that she’d been on station only three months, widened pretty blue eyes; then nodded. “Kynan and Hashim and I go to search also, then.” She hugged him, very briefly, but it didn’t take more than a fleeting contact to feel the tremors shaking through her.
“We’ll find them, Bergitta.” Skeeter forced the conviction in his voice. We have to find them. Dear God, please let us find them soon… and safe.
She nodded and tried to smile, then departed with Kynan Rhys Gower and Hashim, whose glance looked ready to kill anyone who hurt Ianira, despite his youth. Skeeter found Margo’s speculative gaze on Bergitta as she moved away into the crowd. What he read in her eyes defied translation for several moments. At first, he thought it was simply distaste for sharing company with a girl who’d been forced by circumstances to sell the only commodity she possessed to make a living on the station: herself. Then he looked again, struck forcibly by the memories lurking in Margo’s shadowed green eyes, which had filled with pain, shame, remorse. But for what? He knew how other kids Margo’s age had been forced to make a living in New York. He rather doubted Margo had been there long enough to get into serious trouble, given her determination to get onto TT-86 and begin her career as a trainee time scout. But with the kind of pain and the depth of shame he could see in Margo’s eyes, Skeeter found himself wondering how she’d raised the money for a ticket through Shangri-La Station’s expensive Primary gate.
If Kit’s granddaughter had resorted to… that… Skeeter wasn’t sure how Grandpa would take the news. Or—Christ, talk about complications—Malcolm, who planned to marry her. Noneya, Skeeter told himself severely. Whatever the reason for that look in Margo’s eyes, it was very much none of Skeeter’s business.
“We’ll start in Little Agora,” he said gruffly. “It’s closer. Let’s go, I’ve waited too long as it is.”
Wordlessly, his little search party followed.
Jenna Nicole Caddrick didn’t take Ianira to the hotel room she’d reserved nearly a year previously in Carl’s married sister’s name. She hadn’t dared try to check into the luxury hotel, not with Ianira Cassondra draped, unconscious, across her back and shoulders in a fireman’s carry where Noah Armstrong had put her. “Get her to the hotel!” the detective had ordered. “Take the stairways to the basement—I’ve got to find her husband and kids!”
So, staggering with every step, because Jenna was not that much larger than Ianira, herself, she carried the sacred prophetess through the station’s Commons during security’s riot-control blackout, bumping into people and stumbling into walls until she finally found a staircase, its emergency “Exit” sign glowing in the stygian darkness. The lights down here, at least, hadn’t been shut off. Shangri-La Station’s basement was a twisting montage of pipes and conduits and crowded storage rooms where, with any luck—and the Lady alone knew they deserved a little of that—the Ansar Majlis wouldn’t think to look. Or anyone else, for that matter, not right away, at least. Jenna, legs and arms trembling with the effort, joints all but cracking, finally spotted a thick pile of hotel towels, in a big packing crate that someone had pried open to remove part of its contents. Moving gingerly, she lowered Ianira onto the piled towels. The prophetess was still as death, with a nasty bruise along her brow where Noah had slammed her to the floor, saving her life.
Jenna didn’t know much about medicine or first aid, but she knew how to test a pulse, anyway, and remembered that a shock victim had to be kept warm. So she covered Ianira with a whole pile of the crated towels and tested her pulse and wondered if slow and regular might be good or bad news. She bit one lip, then wondered how to let Noah Armstrong know where to find them. We’ll meet at the Neo Edo, kid, that’s where you’ve got reservations and they’ll expect you to show up.
Yeah, she thought glumly. But not with an unconscious prophetess across her shoulder. Showing up with Ianira, Cassondra of Ephesus, in a state of coma was a great way to get the attention of all the wrong people, fast. When Jenna heard the footfalls and the distant murmur of voices, she spun on her heel, gripping Carl’s reproduction pistol in both hands, terrifying herself with that blurred, instinctive reaction. I don’t want to get used to people trying to kill me… or having to kill them. The thundering shock of shooting down a living human being up on Commons would have left Jenna on hands and knees, vomiting, if Ianira Cassondra’s life hadn’t been in mortal jeopardy with every passing second. She wanted to go into shock now, needed to be sick, was shaking violently with the need, but there was someone coming and she couldn’t let them kill Ianira.
The voices drew closer, voices she didn’t recognize. Jenna scowled, fist tight on the reproduction antique weapon in her hand, trying to make sense of what they were saying. She realized abruptly that the words weren’t going to fall into any recognizable patterns because they weren’t in English. Whatever it was, it sounded like… Classical Latin, maybe? Would the Ansar Majlis speak Latin? She couldn’t imagine it, not a pack of medieval terrorists imported from the war-wracked Middle East for the express purpose of destroying the Temple which formed the bedrock of Jenna’s faith.
Then the speakers rounded an abrupt corner and Jenna gasped, giddy with relief. “Noah!”
Armstrong swung around sharply, recognized her, relaxed a death grip on the trigger. “Kid,” Noah muttered, “you are gonna get yourself shot one of these days, doing that. Where is she?”
Jenna pointed, eyeing the people who accompanied Noah. The ashen-faced young man in jeans and an ordinary short-sleeved work shirt, she recognized as the Cassondra’s husband—the Roman slave—and the two little girls with him looked so much like their mother it closed Jenna’s throat. Another young man with them was a kid, really, younger than Jenna. A lot younger. At the moment, Jenna Nicole Caddrick felt about a thousand years old and aging rapidly.
“Ianira!” Marcus cried, running toward his wife.
“She’s unconscious,” Jenna said, voice low and unsteady. “She hit her head on the floor…”
Marcus and the teenager broke into a voluble spate of Latin, Marcus nodding his head vehemently up and down, the kid looking stubborn. A fragment of historical research for a film class came back to her, that Romans bobbed their heads up and down to indicate disagreement, not wagging them from side to side the way moderns did. At length, the younger kid muttered something that sounded foul and trotted away into the dim-lit basement.
“Where’s he going?” Jenna asked. What if they brought the station authorities in? If that happened, Ianira and Marcus and those beautiful little girls would die. Nobody could protect them, not as long as they remained on this station.
Marcus didn’t even glance up. He was stroking his wife’s hair back from her bruised forehead, holding her cold hand. Their little girls whimpered and clung to his leg, too young to know or comprehend what was happening around them, but old enough to know terror. “He goes to bring medicine. Food, water, blankets. We will hide her in the Sanctuary.”
Jenna didn’t know exactly what or where Ianira’s Sanctuary might be, although she suspected it was hidden deep under the station. But she knew enough to blurt out, “You can’t! It won’t be safe there. These bastards will hunt through every inch of this station, looking for her. For you, too, and the children.”
Frightened brown eyes lifted, met hers. “What can we do, then? We have friends here, powerful friends. Kit Carson and Bull Morgan—”
Armstrong cut him off. “Not even Kit Carson can stop the Ansar Majlis,” Noah bit out, bitterness darkening the detective’s voice, leaving it harsh and raw. “You have to get completely off this station. The faster, the better. We sure as hell are,” Noah nodded toward Jenna. “The only place that’s gonna be safe is someplace down time. There’s a whole lot of history to hide in, through this station’s gates. We hide long enough, stay alive long enough, I can slip back through the station in disguise—and I’m damned good at disguises—and get the proof of what we know to the up-time authorities. If we’re going to stop the bastards responsible for this,” Noah jerked a glance toward Ianira, curled up on her side, fragile as rare porcelain, “the only way is to destroy them, make sure they’re jailed for life or executed. And we can’t do that if we’re dead.”
“Who is it?” Marcus grated out. “I will kill them, whoever they are!”
Jenna believed him. Profoundly. Imagination failed her, trying to comprehend what this ordinary-seeming young man in blue jeans and a checkered shirt had already lived through. Noah told Marcus what they were up against. All of it. In thorough and revolting detail. The suspicion that flared in Marcus’ eyes when he looked at Jenna wounded her.
“I’m not my father!” she snapped, fists aching at her sides. “If that son-of-a-bitch were in front of me right now, I’d blow his head off. He always was a lousy, rotten, stinking bastard of a father. I just never knew how much. ’Til now.”
The suspicion in the other man’s brown eyes melted away while something else coalesced in its place. It took a moment to recognize it. When he did, it shook Jenna badly. Pity. This ex-slave, this man whose family was targeted for slaughter, pitied her. Jenna turned roughly aside, shoved her pistol through her belt and her hands into her pockets, and clenched her teeth over a flood of nausea and anger and fright that left her shaking. A moment later, Noah settled a hand on her shoulder.
“You never killed a man before.” It wasn’t a question, didn’t have to be a question, because it was perfectly obvious. Jenna shook her head anyway. “No.” Noah sighed, tightened fingers against her shoulder for a moment. “They say it’s never easy, kid. I hadn’t either, you know, until that hit in New York.” Jenna glanced up, found deep pain in Noah’s enigmatic eyes. “But I always knew I might have to, doing the job I chose. It’s worse for you, probably. When a kid comes to the Temple young as you are, she’s hurting inside already. You got more reason than most. And Cassie told me you cried when you accidentally ran over a mongrel dog on the road out to the ranch.”
She clenched her teeth tighter and tried to hold back tears she did not want the detective to witness. Noah didn’t say anything else. Just dropped the hand from Jenna’s shoulder and turned away, moving briskly around the confined space Jenna had chosen to defend, making up a better bed for Ianira. That it was necessary only upset Jenna more, because she hadn’t done a good enough job of it, herself. The Latin-speaking teenager returned a few silent minutes later, bringing a first aid kit, a heavy satchel that wafted the scent of food when he lifted the flap, blankets piled over one shoulder, and a couple of stuffed toys, which he gave to Ianira’s daughters. The children grabbed hold of the shaggy, obviously home-made bears, and hugged them with all their little-girl strength. Jenna’s eyes stung, watching it. No child only three years old should ever look at the world through eyes that looked like that. And Artemisia’s sister was even younger, barely a year old. Barely walking, yet.
“We can’t stay here long,” Noah was saying, voice low. “They’ll be searching for her. We’ll have to smuggle her up into the hotel room Jenna’s reserved. We can hide there until the Britannia Gate opens.” The detective checked a wristwatch. “We won’t need to hide long. But we’ve got to outfit for the gate between now and then. And find a way to smuggle Ianira through.”
“Us,” Marcus said sharply. “We all go through.”
But Noah was shaking a head that ought to’ve gone grey by now, if the detective’s private life was anything like what they’d already lived through. “No. They’re going to send a death squad after us, Marcus. They’ll send somebody through every gate that opens during the next week, trying to get her. I won’t risk all of you anywhere in one group. Just in case the worst happens and the bastards who follow her through the gate do catch up.”
“Not the Britannia,” Marcus insisted stubbornly. “They cannot get through the Britannia. It is Ripper Season. There have been no tickets for today’s gate for over a year. I could get through working as a porter hauling baggage, because I am a station resident, but no one else.”
“Don’t underestimate these people, Marcus. If necessary, they’ll kill one of the baggage handlers, take his place, and get through that way, using their victim’s ID and timecard.”
Marcus’ already pale cheeks ran dead white. “Yes,” he whispered. “It would be easy. Too easy.”
“So.” Noah’s voice, so difficult to pin down as either a man’s light voice or a woman’s deep one, was cold and precise. “We put Ianira in a steamer trunk. Same thing for the girls. You,” the detective nodded at Marcus, “go through one of the other gates with your children. And we’ll disguise you as a baggage handler, since they’re almost invisible. The problem is, which gate?”
The teenager spoke up at once. “The Wild West Gate opens tomorrow.”
Jenna and Noah exchanged glances. It was perfect. Too perfect. The Ansar Majlis would track Marcus and the girls straight through that gate, figuring it would be the one gate Jenna was likeliest to choose. The tour gate into Denver of 1885 was the only gate besides the sold-out Britannia where the natives spoke English. And Carl had been such a nut about that period of American history, the killers tracking them would doubtless figure Jenna had cut and run through the gate she and Carl would’ve known the most about, the only one she could get tickets for, not knowing, thank the Lady, that Jenna had secretly bought tickets through the Britannia in another name more than a year ago.
Noah, however, was frowning in concentration, studying Marcus closely. “It could work. Put you and the girls down Denver’s Wild West Gate, with me as guard, send Jenna and Ianira through to London.”
“But—” Jenna opened her mouth to protest, terrified at the prospect of Noah abandoning her.
A dark glance from steel-cold grey eyes shut her up. “There are two of us. And two groups of them.” The detective nodded at Marcus and Ianira, who still lay unmoving except to breathe. Fright tightened down another notch, leaving Jenna to wonder if she’d ever be hungry again, her gut hurt so much. Noah said more gently, “We have to split up, kid. If we send Marcus and the girls through without a guard… hell, kid, we might as well shoot them through the head ourselves. No, we know they’re going to follow whoever goes through the Wild West Gate. So I’ll go with them, pose as somebody they’re likely to think is you, use a name they’ll think is something you’d come up with, something you’d think is clever—”
The teenager interrupted. “You don’t look like her. Not anything like her. Nobody would believe you were her. You are too tall.”
For the first time, Jenna Nicole Caddrick saw Noah Armstrong completely flummoxed. The detective’s mouth opened onto shocked silence. But the kid who spoke Latin—which probably meant he was a down-timer, too, same as Marcus—wasn’t finished. “I look more like her than any of us. I’ll go in her place. If I dress up like a rich tourist, wear a wig the color of her hair, pretend to be rude and obnoxious, wear a bonnet low over my eyes and swear a lot, the people hunting her,” the kid nodded toward Jenna, “will think she’s me. Or I’m her. It will work,” he insisted. “There is a tour leaving tomorrow that plans to shoot in a special competition, men and women both. I have watched every John Wayne movie ever made, twice, and I have seen thousands of tourists. I can pretend to be a woman cowboy shooter with no trouble at all.”
The very fact that he’d come up with the idea in the first place told Jenna a great deal about how much the residents of this time station loathed tourists. Obnoxious and rude… It probably would work beautifully, given half a chance. “You realize you’re risking your life?” she asked quietly.
The teenager stared her down. “Yes. They have tried to murder Ianira.”
It was all that needed to be said.
“Julius—” Marcus started to protest.
“No,” Julius swung that determined gaze toward his older friend. “If I die, then I will die with honor, protecting people I love. What more can any man ask?”
How did a kid that young end up that wise? Jenna thought about ancient Rome and what men did to other men there and shuddered inside. The fact that she, herself, had done exactly what this boy was volunteering to do didn’t even occur to her. Jenna, too, was risking her own life to save Ianira’s.
“That’s settled, then,” Noah said briskly. “Julius, I don’t have words to thank you. Right now, I’d better go up to Commons, check into the hotel under the name on my station pass, find an outfitter. You, too, Jenna. I’ll need help getting those steamer trunks back to the hotel, and all the gear we’ve got to buy along with it.” The detective glanced at Marcus and Julius. “We’ll bring the steamer trunks back right away, get Ianira and the rest of you into a hotel room until the gate goes. We’re going to hide you right in the open, in a perfectly ordinary hotel room, and let them tear the basement and the rest of the station apart, looking for you. Then I’m going to establish my Denver persona with a vengeance, draw the attention of the bastards after us, so they’ll concentrate on Denver, rather than London. There’s going to be one more rude and obnoxious cowboy added to the station’s population, today, I believe, the sooner the better. With a name that ought to grab somebody’s attention.”
The purloined letter… Jenna grimaced. She sure as hell didn’t have any better ideas. Noah had gotten her out of New York alive. She was pretty sure Noah could get them all out of the station alive, too. Whether or not she and Ianira stayed that way in London was up to Jenna. She prayed she was up to the job. Because there just wasn’t anybody else around to do it. Thoughts of her father brought her teeth together, hard and brutal. You’re gonna pay for this, you son-of-a-bitch. You’ll pay, if it’s the last thing I ever do on this earth!
Then she headed up to Commons on Noah Armstrong’s heels to fetch a steamer trunk.